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2) The Economist: The future of innovation [Pour de plus en plus d'entreprises, ce sont leurs clients qui sont le moteur de l'innovation.]
http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3749354

The future of innovation: The rise of the creative consumer
Mar 10th 2005 | LOS ANGELES, NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO

How and why smart companies are harnessing the creativity of their customers

LAST November, engineers in the healthcare division of General Electric (GE) unveiled something called the “LightSpeed VCT”, a scanner that can create a startlingly good three-dimensional image of a beating heart. This spring Staples, an American office-supplies retailer, will stock its shelves with a gadget called a “wordlock”, a padlock that uses words instead of numbers. In Munich, meanwhile, engineers at BMW have begun prototyping telematics (combining computing and telecoms) and online services for a new generation of luxury cars. The connection? In each case, the firm's customers have played a big part (GE, BMW) or the leading role (Staples) in designing the product.

How does innovation happen? The familiar story involves boffins in academic institutes and R&D labs. But lately, corporate practice has begun to challenge this old-fashioned notion. Open-source software development is already well-known. Less so is the fact that Bell, an American bicycle-helmet maker, has collected hundreds of ideas for new products from its customers, and is putting several of them into production. Or that Electronic Arts (EA), a maker of computer games, ships programming tools to its customers, posts their modifications online and works their creations into new games. And so on. Not only is the customer king: now he is market-research head, R&D chief and product-development manager, too.

This is not all new. Researchers such as Nikolaus Franke at the University of Vienna and Christian Lüthje at the Technical University of Hamburg have demonstrated the importance of past user contributions to the evolution of everything from sporting equipment to construction materials and scientific instruments. But the rise of online communities, together with the development of powerful and easy-to-use design tools, seems to be boosting the phenomenon, as well as bringing it to the attention of a wider audience, says Eric Von Hippel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is about to publish a book, “Democratising Innovation” (MIT Press). “User innovation has always been around,” he says. “The difference is that people can no longer deny that it is happening.” Indeed, it is “very likely that the majority of innovation happens this way,” says Mr Von Hippel. Such innovation, he says, has a “much higher rate of success”.

According to Mr Von Hippel, in the past firms have mostly resisted customer innovation or not known what to do with it. American farmers were lobbying manufacturers to make cars with detachable back seats as early as 1909. It took Detroit more than a decade to “invent” the pick-up truck. Even now, carmakers respond to customer modifications such as performance-exhaust systems by voiding the warranty. Within three weeks of launching “Mindstorms”, a build-it-yourself robot development system, in 1997, Lego was facing around 1,000 hackers who had downloaded its operating system, vastly improved it, and posted their work freely online. After a long stunned silence, Lego appears to have accepted the merits of this community's work: programs written in hacker language may now be uploaded to the Mindstorms website, for example.

DIY innovation

BMW's efforts to harness the creativity of its customers began two years ago, says Joerg Reimann, the firm's head of marketing innovation management, when it posted a toolkit on its website. This toolkit let BMW's customers develop ideas showing how the firm could take advantage of advances in telematics and in-car online services. From the 1,000 customers who used the toolkit, BMW chose 15 and invited them to meet its engineers in Munich. Some of their ideas (which remain under wraps for now) have since reached the prototype stage, says BMW. “They were so happy to be invited by us, and that our technical experts were interested in their ideas,” says Mr Reimann. “They didn't want any money.” BMW is now broadening its customer-innovation efforts.

Westwood Studios, a game developer now owned by EA, first noticed its customers innovating its products after the launch of a game, “Red Alert”, in 1996: gamers were making new content for existing games and posting it freely on fan websites. Westwood “made a conscious decision to embrace this phenomenon”, says Mike Verdu of EA. Soon it was shipping basic game-development tools with its games, and by 1999 had a dedicated department to feed designers and producers working on new projects with customer innovations of existing ones. “The fan community has had a tremendous influence on game design,” says Mr Verdu, “and the games are better as a result.”

Traditionally, firms have innovated by sending out market researchers to discover “unmet needs” among their customers. These researchers report back. The firm decides which ideas to develop and hands them over to project-development teams. Studies suggest that about three-quarters of such projects fail. Harnessing customer innovation requires different methods, says Mr Von Hippel. Instead of taking the temperature of a representative sample of customers, firms must identify the few special customers who innovate.

Researchers call such customers “lead users”. GE's healthcare division calls them “luminaries”. They tend to be well-published doctors and research scientists from leading medical institutions, says GE, which brings up to 25 luminaries together at regular medical advisory board sessions to discuss the evolution of GE's technology. GE then shares some of its advanced technology with a subset of luminaries who form an “inner sanctum of good friends”, says Sholom Ackelsberg of GE Healthcare. GE's products then emerge from collaboration with these groups.

Staples found its luminaries by holding a competition among customers to come up with new product ideas. It got 8,300 submissions, says Michael Collins, boss of the Big Idea Group, a start-up firm that helped Staples to organise its competition.

At the heart of most thinking about innovation is the belief that people expect to be paid for their creative work: hence the need to protect and reward the creation of intellectual property. One really exciting thing about user-led innovation is that customers seem willing to donate their creativity freely, says Mr Von Hippel. This may be because it is their only practical option: patents are costly to get and often provide only weak protection. Some people may value the enhanced reputation and network effects of freely revealing their work more than any money they could make by patenting it. Either way, some firms are starting to believe that there really is such a thing as a free lunch.

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6) Car Talk/The Puzzler: Desert island [Un casse-tête. Comment sauver sa vie sur une île déserte en flammes ?]
http://www.cartalk.com

You are kidnapped and unceremoniously dumped on a deserted island in the Pacific, a previously deserted island. But this island basically is 16 km long and about a hundred meters wide, and it's completely covered with grass and palm trees. And your captors have been nice enough to give you a few things to assist you in surviving. They've given you a supply of water. They've given you a flashlight and a box of matches and a blanket. So, the first day, you walk around the island, and you notice that you've got no chance of escape because the island is sheer drop-off all around, 200 meters onto sharp rocks into shark-infested waters.

So, there is no escape from this island, and you go to sleep that first night under your blanket, and you're awakened the next morning by the sound of thunder and the bright flash of lightning. And you realize that lightning has struck the far end of the island. You're approximately in the middle, let's say, so 8km away from you, lightning has struck and has set the grass and palm trees on fire. And as luck would have it, there's a breeze blowing from the fire toward you. And you can imagine that everything, everything on the island is going to be toasted, including your butt, unless you think quick.

And the question is: How do you save your sorry butt until your wife can pay off the ransom?

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9) Slate/Moneybox: The greatest job in business [La meilleure planque pour un homme d'affaires, c'est le poste de vice-président du conseil d'administration.]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2115178/
moneybox/Daily commentary about business and finance.

The Greatest Job in Business
Vice chairman.
By Michelle Leder
Posted Thursday, March 24, 2005, at 4:49 AM PT

Clawing your way to the top of the corporate ladder has its appeal: The chairman and CEO get gobs of money, the power to move markets, the keys to the Gulfstream, and minions paid to nod their heads in awe. But really, it's so much work. Wouldn't it be better to be vice chairman?

There are no magazines about vice chairmen and no suck-up profiles in Fortune about them. They don't write advice books, because no one cares what they have to say. No one even cares if they show up in the office. In short—except for one slight drawback—they have the greatest job in business. You will not be surprised to learn that many of them are excellent golfers.

Corporate America is chock full of vice chairmen and anecdotally, at least, the number of people holding the job appears to be climbing. At some companies, it's not uncommon to have four or five vice chairmen at the same time, even though corporate headhunters say they never recruit for the position. That's because despite the lofty title, vice chairman is almost always considered a demotion—a clear sign that someone's career is stuck in neutral and about to head into reverse. (This is the drawback.)

"It's a great title for a position where you don't have to do anything," says Tom McLane, who happens to be vice chairman of the Directorship Search Group, an executive search firm based in Greenwich, Ct.

The greatest thing about the job—besides the hours, which tend to be limited since most vice chairmen don't have all that much responsibility, is that very few vices wind up taking a pay cut. Some even get raises. Newly public Valor Communications gave its former CEO, Kenneth R. Cole, a $5 million transition payment when it made him vice chairman last April. He's also collecting $300,000 in salary, despite being required to devote only around 25 percent of his time to the company. Three of Atlanta-based SunTrust Bank's vice chairmen made over $1 million last year in salary and bonus.

But don't dash off your résumé just yet. This is a tough job to get: It almost exclusively goes to a top executive who's been shafted.

One easy way to get the job is to lose out in the power grab to become CEO. That's what seems to have happened to Lois Juliber, a top executive at Colgate-Palmolive, who was named a vice chairwoman last July along with fellow top executive Javier Teruel. At the same time, the company named Ian Cook chief operating officer, a job viewed as next in line to become CEO. Last month, Juliber announced that she was retiring on April 1. Teruel is still there, at least for now, though he's undoubtedly talking to headhunters. Most vice chairmen who wind up with the job this way tend to get bored pretty quickly.

Another common path to vice chairman's office is through a merger. This is the primary reason that headhunters believe the ranks of vice chairmen have been growing. After all, there's usually only room for one No. 1 and in most mergers, that job belongs to the CEO at the company doing the buying. Big deals like the one between Procter & Gamble and Gillette, or SBC and AT&T are likely to lead to a wavelet of vice chairmen. Banks are particularly prolific when it comes to handing out the title: Last year, SunTrust had five vice chairmen and Charlotte-based Bank of America had two. Merger-fallout vice chairmen tend to mill around the office for a year or two, before heading off to the golf course full-time.

Sometimes entrepreneurs wind up as vice chairmen when they decide they'd rather start spending the money they've made instead of spending all of their time glued to their BlackBerrys. Nextel co-founder Morgan O'Brien has been a vice chairman at the company since 1996, though he stepped down from active employment in November 2003. Outback Steakhouse announced this month that co-founder Robert Basham was stepping down as chief operating officer to become vice chairman.

Of course, some vice chairmen have actual responsibility. Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger is widely viewed as Warren Buffet's partner despite having the vice chairman's title. And some vices eventually make it into the big chair. Jim Skinner was named vice chairman of McDonald's in December 2002. At the time, it was widely viewed as a sign that he was out of the running. But the company's next two CEOs died in quick succession, and Skinner was anointed CEO last November.

Still, the more common move is from vice chairman to consultant. Indeed, three of SunTrust's former vice chairmen became paid consultants to the bank. Which, come to think of it, may be an even better job than that of vice chairman, since it requires even less time in the office.

Michelle Leder writes a daily blog at www.footnoted.org that looks at SEC filings and is the author of Financial Fine Print: Uncovering a Company's True Value.

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10) The Economist: Anti-social behavior [Un retour sur les fameuses ASBO, les ordonnances britanniques contre les incivilités.]
http://www.economist.com
Anti-social behaviour

Enemies of the state?
Feb 3rd 2005 | SHEFFIELD

People worry more about anti-social behaviour, but that's not necessarily because there's more of it about

THE trouble began in Meersbrook, a district of the poor northern town of Sheffield, in the autumn of 2003. At first it was just a group of teenagers loitering outside a shop on the corner of Valley Road and Brooklyn Road. But their numbers grew, swelled by an unruly family that had recently moved in nearby. Walls were soon covered with graffiti, fireworks were let off in the street and drug dealers began to tout for customers. “For Sale” signs appeared on local houses. A neighbourhood that had never been particularly cohesive seemed about to fall apart.

Then, last August, the police secured a “dispersal order”, which enabled them to break up groups of loiterers and return under-16s to their homes. They also asked six local people to sign contracts promising not to misbehave. The contracts have no legal force, but seem to have worked. The graffiti have gone, the gang is smaller and better mannered and, as Steve Kidder, a local shopkeeper, puts it, “we're gradually getting back to where we were.”

Until recently, Sheffield's police would probably not have devoted so much energy to solving a neighbourhood problem. Their priorities—determined largely by the Home Office, 140 miles away in London—were tackling burglars, car thieves and other criminals who could be locked up for a satisfyingly long time. But priorities have changed and resources been redirected. Eighteen months ago, the local sergeant, Alan Boyle, had four officers to deploy in the area. He will soon have 20.

The change is a response to demand, partly from local people and partly from the government, for action against the kind of petty irritations collectively described as anti-social behaviour. Five years ago, the concept was almost unknown. These days, it is one of the most prominent issues in local and national politics and in the British press (see chart).

That is probably not because there is more of it about. Vandalism (the closest proxy for it in the statistics) has declined since the mid-1990s along with most other crimes. Rather, says Louise Casey, director of the government's anti-social-behaviour unit, public concern has migrated from old-fashioned things like burglary and car theft to petty incivilities. “As crime has fallen, it has opened up some spare capacity to worry about litter, graffiti and abandoned cars.”

The other reason more attention is paid to anti-social behaviour is that there are more tools for dealing with it. Most powerful of these is the anti-social behaviour order (ASBO)—a civil order, lasting for a minimum of two years, that can be used severely to restrict a person's liberties. In September 2003, a mentally unstable drunk, Paul Booker, was barred from doing anything “likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress” to anybody in Sheffield, or from using any bus, tram or train in South Yorkshire. Perhaps not surprisingly, he soon broke the order and was jailed.

In Sheffield, ASBOs are generally sought only after milder techniques have failed to change a person's behaviour. Just 49 have been handed out since 1999—one to a Meersbrook resident. That contrasts with other northern cities such as Manchester, where 20 orders are being handed out every month. There, according to Martin Lee, head of the council's nuisance strategy group, ASBOs are frequently used as an option of first resort, even for petty troublemakers. “If one person says ‘I was intimidated while using a cash machine,' then we're in.”

Manchester has used ASBOs against both minor indiscretions and serious crimes. Last year, it secured an order preventing four gang members from wearing body armour or riding pedal cycles. Such a move has two advantages over prosecuting people for criminal offences: it is easier to prove a breach, and the resulting sentence is likely to be tougher. In 2003, a prolific Cardiff shoplifter was caught stealing from two shops. For one of his crimes, he was sentenced to a month's detention—a standard tariff for a persistent offender. In entering the second shop, however, he breached the terms of an ASBO. For that, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

The government approves of Manchester's war on incivility. David Blunkett, the former home secretary, viewed the number of ASBOs handed out as a vital measure of police performance; he also affirmed that they should not necessarily be regarded as a weapon of last resort. But is the tough approach the better one?

It is not yet known how many people stick to the terms of their order. Of the 855 ASBOs handed out in England and Wales between June 2000 and December 2002, just over a third—305—were breached in the same period. Not bad; but, since the minimum duration of an ASBO is two years, the proportion ultimately flouted will almost certainly be higher.

A more important test is what happens when the forces of law and order are deployed away from areas like Meersbrook, as eventually they must be. If the Home Office's predictions turn out to be right, locals will gain the confidence to deal with petty nuisances themselves. If, on the other hand, they come to believe that the only remedy for incivility lies in the police and the courts, they are likely to remain cowed.

So far, the drive against anti-social behaviour has encouraged some neighbourly behaviour. It has also given free rein to prejudices and suspicions. As Neil Pilkington, the chief solicitor of Salford City Council, puts it: “There are people in every community who believe that if you're under 18 and breathing, you ought to be on an ASBO.”

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Tue Mar 22,11:17 AM ET

PARIS (AFP) - Paris city authorities began distributing thousands of specially-designed glass carafes in a campaign to wean the public off bottled mineral water and back onto the tap. Reacting to polls showing that 51 percent of the two million Parisians buy their drinking water in shops, the city hall and publicly-owned water company Eau de Paris argue that the piped alternative is cheaper, more ecologically sound, and just as healthy.

Hundreds joined a long queue at the esplanade in front of the Hotel de Ville where Parisians could present a coupon downloaded from the Internet or cut from a local newspaper in return for a carafe marked with the Eau de Paris logo and an Eiffel Tower.

"People buy bottled water because of the marketing, and we realised that if we were to win them back to the tap we would have to do some marketing of our own. It's all about giving Paris water an image and explaining why it is good for you," said Franck Madureira of Eau de Paris. Some 30,000 carafes -- created by designer Pierre Cardin -- have been manufactured. A third were being handed to the public Tuesday -- which is World Water Day -- and the rest will be distributed to cafes and restaurants.

"People say the taste is better when you buy it, but I think that is rubbish. And this way I get a free carafe," said Jacques-Yves Bezal, who was waiting in line. Fitting neatly into the door of a fridge and bearing a push-on top, the carafes are to be filled with water from the tap and used instead of a shop-bought bottle.

"Paris water has a mineral and sanitary quality that is just as good as anything you buy in a bottle. But it is between 100 and 200 times cheaper. It is delivered straight to your home. And there is no packaging," said Anne Le Stat, president of Eau de Paris. Launching the campaign Monday, the capital's socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe said that he drinks three litres of tap water every day. "It's good for the health. It keeps me in shape," he said.

Around half of the 700,000 cubic metres of drinking water consumed every day in Paris comes from the rivers Seine and Marne, and is treated in three purification plants. The rest comes from artesian wells around the capital. "If we can tip the balance and get a majority of the population back drinking the tap variety, we will consider the campaign a success," said Madureira.

The remains of a Roman aqueduct are still visible in the south of Paris, but from the Middle Ages most of the capital's water was pumped from the Seine. Napoleon brought in water by the newly-built Canal de l'Ourcq, but the modern system -- drawing on springs some 150 kilometers (100 miles away) -- was conceived during the city's late 19th century modernisation under Baron Haussmann. At the same time the city was endowed with its trademark green drinking-fountains, donated by the British philanthropist Sir Richard Wallace.

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12) Blog/Chez Pim: L'Os à moelle [Un point de vue perso sur notre bistro L'Os à moelle.]

http://chezpim.typepad.com/blogs/2004/12/los_moelle_my_s.html
L'Os à Moelle: my sentimental Paris

My bistro favorite in Paris comes and goes, but there is one constant that has been a sentimental favorite since the early 90's. I just made it back there again on this last trip.

That night, my friends Matt, Lynn and I just arrived in Paris for our Thanksgiving holiday. It was the only night in the trip that I had made no reservation, preferring to leave it open in case we were too jetlagged. After a rather mediocre lunch --with a bottle even more mediocre Beaujolais Nouveau that smelled of banana purée-- at a nameless bistro in our neighbourhood, I was determined to find a better place for dinner for our first night in Paris.

Without a reservation on Thursday night, finding a decent place for dinner can be a little difficult. Well, not as difficult as trying to get a taxi on a Saturday night, but nonetheless. I decided to take them to La Cave de L'Os à Moelle, a tiny wine bar extension of the restaurant with the same name, and a fittingly casual place for our first night in a new time zone. We couldn't get into La Cave, but luckily there was an open table at the restaurant, so that was where we settled in for dinner. Both of these are owned by the charming Thierry Faucher, one of the young chefs trained by the affable Christian Constant at the Crillon.

The four young protégés of Christian Constant during his time at the kitchen at Les Ambassadeurs, Thierry Faucher of L'Os à Moelle, Yves Camdeborde (previously) of La Régalade, Thierry Breton of Chez Michel, and Rodolpe Paquin of Le Repaire de Cartouch, were at the forefront of the Bistros Modernes movement in the early to mid 90's. It was these four friends, well trained and well on their way to garner stars of their own in the long tradition of classically trained French Chefs, who shocked the gastronomic world when they decided to each open their own bistro, each in their own little corner of Paris.

Their move --the French gastronomic brain-drain if you will-- was seen as the harbinger of things to come, and had many pundits predicting the demise of French cuisine. Luckily, the foretold demise did not come to pass, and these chefs --but for the exception of Yves Camdeborde who has left La Régalade and about to open a Pension de Famille-- are still happily cooking in their own kitchen, while other young chefs, like Piège at Les Ambassadeurs, Alléno at Restaurant Le Meurice, and Frechon at Le Bristol, have risen to pick up the torch of haute cuisine.

In this group of four, I would say that Camdeborde, especially at his best at La Régalade, is the most talented. The best bistro meal I’ve had –beating the nearest competition by far- was the first time at La Régalade. Though that restaurant in the months, or even a year before his recent departure, was lagging a bit. Paquin, at Le Repaire de Cartouche, is country and hearty, but has been rather up and down. Breton always has interesting menu items from Brittany, where he was from. While Faucher –a biker dude though he is- seems to cook with the most light and feminine touch.

The menu at L'Os à Moelle is small. While the price has gone up a little bit since the last time I was there, from 35 euro to 38, the format remains the same: five courses, including dessert, plus an optional small cheese course (no supplement). There are always two to three choices for each course, perhaps more for desserts, beginning with a soup course, then a light course of cold entrée, perhaps a piece of foie gras or saumon mariné. The next course is often of fish or seafood, then the final savory course is of meat or poultry. There is an optional cheese course, always accompanied by a small green salad, before the dessert.

The cooking here is always reliable, with a focus firmly on using pristine ingredients and letting them shine. The sauces are intense but never overpowering, and often lightened with spices such as saffron and thyme flowers, providing a nice punctuation. Faucher particularly excels at soup and fish courses. One of the best pieces of the humble Dorade I've had was here at L'Os à Moelle, simply pan-fried, in a light sauce with a nose of citrus, served atop a light as air purée -not of potato, no, perhaps salsify, i'm not sure, it has been quite a few years.

T onight, we started our meal with two beautiful soups, a warm soup of pumpkin, with a few cutest little pieces of ravioli filled with comté cheese, and a cold soup of cauliflower puree, with crunchy bits of garlic crouton and chopped chives. They were both wonderful, though I preferred the ever so slightly bitter edge in the creamy smooth cauliflower soup.

The second course was a foie gras terrine and raw scallops salad. The foie gras terrine was delicious and beautiful, a thin sliver served atop a small pile of crisp and bitter greens, sprinkled with a few bits of dried figs and a cracked walnut. StjacquesThe salad of raw St.Jacques was also quite lovely. The scallops were on the smaller side, but impeccably fresh and sweet, served with the same bitter greens, slices of almond, and a few curious ribbons of cheese. The combination was rather intriguing, and provided for some very satisfying blend of textures and flavors.

The fish course had two choices as well, a Lotte Rôti, roasted monkfish, with a sweet potato puree, dried chanterelles and harring roe sauce, Lieujeunepoelleand a Lieu Jaune pôelé, pan-fried Pollack with endive in a goose reduction sauce. Lieu Jaune, a member of the cod fish family, has little taste of its own, so it did well in the flavorful yet light reduction sauce. The sharpness of harring roe was also a perfect foil for the creamy Lotte.

iThe meat course on this particular menu had one irresistable item for me, a perdreau rôti, raosted partridge. This was the height of the season for game, so it was simply unthinkable for me to ignore the only game item on the menu. The partridge came perfectly roasted -perhaps on the rare side for the American palate but not for mine- with a piece of crisp bacon on top, and a mound of buttery soft sauteed savoy cabbage. Perfect.

We also had a roasted saddle of rabbit and a piece of roasted lamb. The rabbit was tasty, if a bit over done to my taste. The lamb was from Limousin -Agneaurotimeaning that it has a pedegree of Indication Géographique Protégée, a protected geographic origin, similar to an AOC for wine- and was roasted to a perfect medium rare, served with roasted garlic and root vegetables, all very intense and tasty.

As for our libation, we began -comme d'habitude- with a glass of Vin Cuit Provençale for Matthew and I, and a glass of pink and bubbly Cerdon du Bugey for our equally bubbly Lynn. Both of these wines are slightly sweet, the vin cuit more so than the Cerdon. Drinking something sweet before the meal is a way to get your appetite going, or so the French would have us believe.

Vin Cuit Provençale, a traditional sweet wine from -you guessed it- Provence, is heated in a cauldron before aging in oak barrel. It can be served as dessert wine, or as apéritif. This particular glass was quite lovely, with a dominant nose of citrus, then a bit of nuts -hazelnut, I'd say- and also of raisin.

Cerdon du Bugey is a sparkling rosé from Bugey, in the Jura mountains of Eastern France. When these four bistros modernes were first open, serving a humble Cerdon du Bugey instead of the fancypants Champagne was seen as turning their collective nose up at the more traditional ways of doing things. But I don't believe that it was done only to prove a point, Cerdon du Bugey in its approachable, lightly sweet, and bubbly nature, not to mention its prettiest shade of pink, is quite a fine and fun way to begin one's meal. I, for one, am a convert.

With our food we had a bottle of lovely Chinon, a 2002 Beaumont from Catherine and Pierre Breton. A beautiful ruby-red wine that was very fruity -a nose of cassis and other berries- but with strong acidity to balance the fruits, unlike your garden-variety fruit-bomb Californian plonks. Catherine and Pierre Breton are one of the best producers in the Loire Valley, their wines are made from organic grapes, and processed with very little added sulphur. The results are lively, beautiful wines that can be found at all the cool bistros and wine bars in Paris. Next time you are in Paris and see their names on a wine menu, try a bottle, you'll thank me for it.

Before the desserts we had a small cheese and salad course. The salad part was a few crunchy leaves of gorgeously purple and green leaves. I am not entirely sure what they were, but they tasted like endives. There were two small serving of cheese, I forgot to take down the names, but one was a dry aged cheese from the Pyrénées, and another something else, medium hard in texture -sort of like a creamy young gruyère- fashioned into a pretty confection on top of the dry cheese.

The dessert course was delightful, Terrinedepoirea deceptively simple dacquoise of chocolate, with a chocolate-covered orange slice in a saffron sauce, also a simple poached pear made more elegant in a terrine, served with a creamy vanilla ice cream.

Then there was my coup de coeur, sweet roasted figs with tangy chèvres cheese gratin on top. The top of the goat cheese was covered with burnt sugar, as in crème brulée. Gorgeous and absolutely delectable to boot. A beautiful finalé to my wonderful meal.

I've been coming here since the early days of the restaurant, 1994 perhaps, way before I consider Paris my stomping grounds. This place, the bright yellow interior, the quirky art on the wall, the secret door underneath the wooden bar, all have become as familiar as an old friend to me. Many intimate dinners, many fun time with friends, and many a broken heart later, my L'Os à Moelle is still here, looking very much the same as the first time we met, serving food that is just as tasty as when I first discovered it. A la prochaîne, my old friend, it will not be so long before I see you again.

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13) The Economist/Charlemagne: Not at your service [Souvenez-vous de la directive Bolkestein ?]
http://www.economist.com
Charlemagne/Not at your service
Mar 10th 2005

The Franco-German-led rejection of the services directive

WHEN the European Union holds a summit dedicated to the economy in two weeks' time, the leaders of France and Germany might be forgiven if they covered their heads and hid under the table. The news from the two biggest economies in the euro area seems unremittingly bleak. The IMF says Germany will grow by less than 1% this year, and its headline unemployment count is now over 5m (12.6%), the highest since the 1930s. French economic growth is a bit faster—analysts put it at about 2% this year—but its unemployment has also gone above 10%.

As luck would have it, the European Commission in Brussels has a good plan to spur growth in the EU: a services directive. This is aimed at breaking down barriers to trade in services across the EU. Manufacturing trade was mostly freed up by the internal-market programme of the 1990s. But national rules still put huge obstacles in the way of service providers that want to trade outside their home country, whether they be lawyers, architects or peddlers of public relations. Since services account for 70% of jobs in the EU, sweeping away obstacles to their trade should stimulate much growth. An independent study for the commission has concluded that the liberalisation of services could create up to 600,000 new jobs and generate new economic activity worth €33 billion ($43 billion) a year.

It sounds like just the kind of lifeline that the leaders of France and Germany might want to grasp. Yet apparently it is not. Over the past fortnight, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder have taken it in turns to denounce the services directive and to demand its withdrawal. And the commission, supposedly the champion of free-market liberalisation within Europe, has buckled. Charlie McCreevy, the internal-market commissioner, announced last week that opponents of the services directive had “won the debate”, adding that the directive as currently written “will not fly”. Mr McCreevy now plans to propose substantial amendments. Economic liberals, who had considered Mr McCreevy as one of their own, are aghast. Paul Hofheinz of the Lisbon Council, a Brussels think-tank, asks “what is the point of an internal-market commissioner who does not stand up for the internal market?”

The commission was taken by surprise by the backlash it is now facing. When the original proposal was placed before the previous commission, in the dying days of the Romano Prodi era last year, it was passed unanimously and with little discussion. But since then it has been demonised by trade unions and the left across western Europe. It does not help that the commissioner who originally proposed the directive was Frits Bolkestein, a Dutch liberal whose name is conveniently reminiscent of Frankenstein. French socialists have seized upon the “Bolkestein directive” as encapsulating everything they loathe about the “ultra-liberal” Europe that is allegedly being promoted in Brussels. Martin Shultz, leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament, says that, if the directive were passed unchanged, it would mean “the destruction of the European social model”.

What particularly outrages opponents of the services directive is its “country of origin principle”. This would allow service providers based in one EU country to offer their services in another, provided only that they satisfied their own national rules and laws. The idea, modelled on what was done for goods in the 1990s, is to avoid the risk that the creation of a single market in services might necessitate even more red tape, as Brussels sought to define single harmonised standards for every sector.

Opponents of the country of origin principle say it is an open invitation to “social dumping”, in which competition from poorer EU countries would drive down wages and welfare standards in such countries as France and Germany. German nerves are already on edge after widespread reports of a wave of job losses among workers in slaughterhouses, who are apparently being displaced by butchers employed by central European contractors. German trade unions complain that the newcomers are undercutting wages and hygiene standards. They fear that further liberalisation of services could lead to similar outcomes in other industries, such as construction and nursing.

The Bolkestein defence

Fans of the commission proposal say many of these concerns were catered for in the Bolkestein directive. They point out that “posted workers” would have to obey local social and labour legislation, wherever they are working. It would be illegal to undercut a host country's minimum wage or health-and-safety regulations, or (God forbid) to break French law on the 35-hour-week. Similarly, the commission had already left particularly sensitive services of public interest, such as transport and much of health care, outside the directive's scope.

Mr McCreevy has now promised that he will look again at these exceptions and expand them further, in deference to national sensitivities. Yet the risk is that so many “exceptions” are written into the revised directive that the overall effect will be next to no liberalisation at all. Worse, an effort to meet Franco-German demands for “minimum standards” for European service providers could lead to new regulations being imposed on countries that now have relatively liberal regimes.

It is possible that the services directive could be pushed back in a more liberal direction, once the French government has got over the hurdle of its referendum on the EU constitution in late May. But a deeper change of mood may also be at work. Faced with rising unemployment and growing competition, not just from China and India, but within the very gates of the EU itself, French and German political leaders have sometimes spoken boldly of the need to embrace reform. But in tough times, it is always tempting to reach for old certainties. And regulatory and protectionist instincts still run deep in the countries that invented the Napoleonic code and the craft guild.

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14) The Washington Post: Clean like a pro [On peut maintenant suivre un stage pour apprendre à faire le ménage.]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59717-2005Mar23.html
Clean Like a Pro
A Crash Course in Spring Cleaning From MaidPro U

By Annie Groer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 24, 2005; Page H01

I love to cook, am a whiz with a hot iron and rather enjoy polishing the family silver(plate).

But the larger task of cleaning an entire apartment or house leaves me cold. Always has.

I might have remained forever ignorant of what it really means to clean from "top to bottom" (remember this phrase, it will reappear) had not a flyer from MaidPro, the Boston-based national cleaning franchise, recently come my way.

"All our service providers are professionally trained through our MaidPro University," the ad boasted. University? Where better to acquire a remedial education than from a firm that charges by the hour, trains two-person crews to clean as many as four houses a day, and has as its pun-ly motto, "It's About Time."

Clearly grime is money.

My professor was self-described "neat freak," Philip Doyle, who spent 25 years in hotel management (housekeeping was definitely part of his portfolio) before he bought the Adams Morgan MaidPro franchise in October. His classroom was the Spring Valley home of a client, where I watched Doyle and one of his top cleaners do everything from shaking dead leaves off a pair of potted trees and dusting oil paintings with a fat, sable paintbrush to vacuuming a sofa and knife-creasing throw pillows.

Doyle's first rule of cleaning echoes that of many household experts: "top to bottom." This technique drives all dust, cobwebs, pet hair and shower scum downward from ceilings, walls and furnishings. Once on the floor, the collective mess becomes a snap to vacuum, sweep or mop up.

His second-favorite direction is "from the farthest point to the door," which allows the cleaner to exit without tracking dirt over newly pristine surfaces.

Yikes! In less than 10 minutes, I had acquired two foundations of cleaning.

But real Maid Pro students learn much more, especially the overarching lesson of the order of chores.

First, strip the beds and put sheets and pillowcases in the washer. Then clean the whole kitchen, which is the toughest room in the house and gets a full half-hour of attention. (Doyle loves washing kitchen floors with a "Sh-mop," its large head covered by an abrasive pad and elasticized cloth cap). Continue by cleaning all bathroom surfaces before doing the bedrooms. Finish the laundry and bathrooms, clean the hallway and stairwell, and end up in the living and dining rooms.

MaidPro owners nationwide must use the same cleaning products, most of them from Procter & Gamble, including a liquid Comet cleanser that is not available to the public. The techniques are also uniform.

Take the toilet: Spray liquid scouring solution on the outside, from the top of the tank to the base of the throne. Pour Mr. Clean Toilet Bowl Cleaner into the water. Wait 15 minutes, wipe the exterior with a nylon scrubby and a microfiber cloth (color coded so it will not mistakenly be reused in the kitchen, thank heavens). Tackle the bowl with a long-handled toilet brush.

For framed art, spray Windex onto a paper towel to clean the glass. Spraying the glass directly may ruin the picture behind it. To shine a metal frame, first remove the photo, glass and backing, then apply polish (Doyle uses Nonox for Brass, Mrs. Wright's Silver Cream for sterling or silverplate and a soft toothbrush for detail work). When the polish dries, rinse it off with hot water and completely dry the frame with a soft cloth before reassembly.

He routinely damp-cleans hardwood floors with a mild solution of four ounces of Spic and Span and 28 ounces of water. Occasionally, he uses Dura Seal paste wax on a wood floor and polishes it to high gleam with an electric buffer. He uses Riccar upright and tank vacuums with HEPA filters for most tasks, but prefers a ProTeam backpack vacuum for draperies because the wand has an adjustable suction vent and the machine is light enough for the cleaner to wear while climbing a ladder.

In dusting furniture -- MaidPro uses Starfiber microfiber cloths because they create enough static to attract dust and pet hair -- he instructs cleaners to move every single knickknack and clean each with a brush before applying the fabric to the tabletop.

He generally just dusts wooden furniture or goes over it with a cloth slightly dampened with a diluted Spic and Span solution because, over time, Doyle says, aerosol furniture polish containing silicon softens the finish and makes it less dirt-resistant and more scratch-prone.

There are other rules to master, including these: Always put newspaper on the floor before de-gunking an oven, never spray cleaners on or near a fish tank or pet cage, and check for toothpaste splatters on bathroom mirrors.

After several weeks of MaidPro University training, it's time for "graduation" to a team of one's own. In this area, MaidPro prices range from about $60 for a condo (oven and refrigerator cleaning cost extra, and the firm will not do personal laundry) to $1,200 for a five-story ambassador's residence.

To be sure, other commercial services also train their staffs, although they don't call it college.

Maid Brigade, based in Atlanta with several Washington area franchises, offers a week-long combination of morning classes and afternoon hands-on cleaning lessons. Chicago-based Merry Maids, the nation's largest franchise cleaning service, not only trains its own workforce but posts helpful hints on its Web site (www.merrymaids.com) for the rest of us.

Who knew that lemon oil applied to bathroom tile walls can retard soap-scum buildup? Ditto for car or boat wax on the sides of a porcelain bathtub (do not for a second think about waxing the bottom of the tub and inviting a horrific fall). If stubborn toilet bowl rings don't succumb to an acid-based bowl cleaner and a nylon-backed scrubby sponge, attack them with a pumice stone (it must always be kept wet during rubbing). This will work only on vitreous porcelain.

I cannot wait to run my own private tutorial for the industrious young woman who currently cleans my apartment every other week. But first I must buy some microfiber cloths, a fat paintbrush and a Sh-mop.

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